I see Diptrace has a free trial. For a paid version, I'm not sure what my pin count would be. For a large-ish panel, the pin count could be mighty high. I can probably estimate it.

I might be able to score an educational version of Eagle. I think it may be too limited though.

If I used a limited version of the software to make one board, the panel would be just copy/paste of the individual boards. Possibly I could get someone with a full version of the software to do the copy/paste part for me (with no pin count limitation).

I believe there is a free version of Eagle as well. Both products have a free trial, or a free version limited to pin count or board size, but enough to learn the package and decide whether to buy it or not.

Gold Phoenix will step and repeat for you, as I understand it, so you just have to do one board.

If you have friends that will help you with one program or the other that might be a good reason to start with that package first and see if you like it.

i remember the version 2.x were performing ok, all through hole parts, and ver 4.x with through hole parts with extra features that gary tested turned out ok, but i never saw anywhere what's an actual price of 2.x or 4.x BMS's, or the BOM price for 2.x or 4.x, so what was the estimated tag you thought to put if the boards were in production manually assembled ? (as this was the main reason to try transferring to SMT, too much labor with through hole)

any 1 remember top of their head BOM price to assemble 2.x or 4.x ? i followed a lot this thread but i totally don't remember at what page the BOM's were mentioned.

any ways how many people are interested in this great boardy ? now is the time to practice the "power of many" or "the change starts with you", i can spare 10$ a month without expecting for a time frame or anything in return for next 6 month unless i die or kidnapped by aliens (i don't mean that after 6 months i expect for anything, it's just a period i can spare), i know it's not much and though my relative salary is pretty ok avg around 1300$ full time, problem is most of it covers rent and bills, and 10$ is something that wont take me to the grave.

my 10$ alone is didly squat, but 100 members and that's something to work with.

I haven't had time lately to deal with this, but I'm sure there's a way to bring it alive again.
I DO have Eagle running. There's a learning curve. ExpressPCB is still an option.

Building a board with this many parts is a major pain and not many people want to do it. Fully built boards would have a much larger market but is a huge investment. Before that, more of a track record needs to be established with the hand built version.

Pricing will have to include a fairly large chunk for paying back development costs. Even at that, there is little to no economic incentive to the project. We'd have to sell hundreds of them just to break even.

I would tend to think more in terms of reasonable profit on present/future products than recovering previously sunk costs. That will come in due time, but it is depressing to think that way and it is not how customers perceive the product.

I've always held on to the belief that in order for a product to be useful, it has to be affordable (and work). Regardless of the development costs, be assured that the pricing will be somewhat reasonable.

I haven't given up on the idea of modifying a Ping board to work either. I have a simple mod that will bypass the active cutoff for the main controller load, but keep it in line for the controller logic, so the pack still can't drain below LVC. This will allow it to work for big amps on discharge. Still not sure about charging though.

Last I heard from him was about a month ago. Like posted earlier, he needs money to eat, pay mortgage, etc. so is working on things that make money, not BMS circuits. Both of us are dangerously close to losing our homes.

fechter wrote:Last I heard from him was about a month ago. Like posted earlier, he needs money to eat, pay mortgage, etc. so is working on things that make money, not BMS circuits. Both of us are dangerously close to losing our homes.

I'm sorry to hear that. I hope things will work out for both of you. I assume that this is mainly caused by the general declining home value in California, right?

SamTexas wrote:
I'm sorry to hear that. I hope things will work out for both of you. I assume that this is mainly caused by the general declining home value in California, right?

Well, in my case, it's mainly due to having 3 kids in college at the same time combined with a very high cost of living in my area (Marin county, CA). If I survive working 3 jobs, I can probably get the kids through college.

fechter wrote:
Well, in my case, it's mainly due to having 3 kids in college at the same time combined with a very high cost of living in my area (Marin county, CA). If I survive working 3 jobs, I can probably get the kids through college.

I understand what you're going through. My two kids just finished college, one in May 2011 and one in December 2011. Hang in there, things can only get better.

I hope to get a run of boards done at some point. I need to revise and check the most recent version very carefully before submitting a run, as mistakes are too costly. Once the layout is 'validated' with a successful test, a larger batch could be done. Right now, time availability is more of a limiting factor than money.